Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals, Macbook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air
Western Digital My Passport Studio Portable Drives for Mac
Are you looking for a tiny portable hard drive for doing Time Machine backups on the road? I do a lot of traveling with my MacBook Air and don't often get a chance to back it up to the 1 TB monster at home. Although there are several other diminutive hard drives on the market, when I saw the My Passport Studio line of portable drives announced today by Western Digital, I ordered one. After all, the case matches my AirBook!Available in 160 ($129.99), 250 ($189.99), and 320 GB ($219.99) flavors, My Passport Studio drives are about 3.2" x 5.0" x .71" (81mm x 127 mm x 18 mm) in size and weigh a featherweight 6.4 ounces (.18 kg). The drives are bus powered -- USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 -- so there's no need to tote a power brick when you're traveling. They're formatted as HFS+ Journaled, requiring Mac OS X 10.4.11+ or 10.5.2+.
The drives are available from Western Digital, and through a variety of online and brick-and-mortar stores. The 250 and 320 GB drives are showing back-order status.
Thanks to Denver pal Mike for the phone call tip this morning!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jp said 4:28PM on 5-21-2008
I got one of these the other day actually, the 320gb one was only €129.95 in my local PC World. Works a charm and it's tiny and pretty in shiny black. Nice.
Reply
K said 4:31PM on 5-21-2008
what benefits do this have over the standard my passport drives...
just curious 160 is running like 90 bucks at my student store and 250 is only 120.
Reply
K said 4:32PM on 5-21-2008
oops, guess i should click through or read at all
besides the obvious mac formatting, the firewire connections seems to be the difference (which usually costs a bit more too.
Ethan Hixson said 4:55PM on 5-21-2008
If you're looking for a cheaper option and something that doesn't look too bad you can get a 320 samsung 2.5" drive 5400 RPM w/ 8MB cache for $124.99 and then an external drive enclosure USB 2.0 $30, a firewire enclosure for $20 more. For the drive and USB 2.0 enclosure w/ tax and shipping to chicago it pans out to $171.54. I purchased a drive enclosure when I upgrade my harddrive for my MB. Makes for a great backup drive/USB drive/time machine drive.
Reply
Colin Whitworth said 5:15PM on 5-21-2008
I'll never buy another WD product again. The external HD that my company bought for us constantly cause system and program crashes, and half the time it fails to do its nightly BU.
Reply
niknak said 6:14PM on 5-21-2008
Me too. I had one which caused me no end of trouble.
Jose said 5:17PM on 5-21-2008
I use my ipod for this.
Reply
Mikey said 5:18PM on 5-21-2008
What's an AirBook? ;)
Reply
Alex said 5:39PM on 5-21-2008
What are the benefits to firewire 400? its 400 Mbps while USB 2.0 is 480... That said, a WD Passport 250GB portable runs about $90-100, and a 320 is about $130. Unless you're buying from a retail store... which is dumb for hard drives/memory.
Reply
Paul said 5:45PM on 5-21-2008
FireWire has faster sustained speeds. I can write to my external drive at 35MB/s over FW400, compared to 12MB/s when I connect via the USB.
gil said 6:01PM on 5-21-2008
You can boot from Firewire when something bad happens to your Mac, try that with any USB drive. Worth the extra cost if you take the time to make a boot disk.
James Madley said 6:09AM on 5-22-2008
USB has a maximum speed of 480Mbps but rarely ever achieves speeds faster than FireWire, which keeps a constant speed of 400Mbps.
maxim said 6:41PM on 5-21-2008
you can't boot off time-machine backups anyway, so no matter...
Rob said 10:04PM on 5-21-2008
Alex, the USB 2.0 spec is a joke. There are THREE types of USB 2.0 devices:
low speed -- 1.5 Mbps
full speed -- 12 Mbps
High Speed -- 480 Mbps
You need to know what type of USB 2.0 you are getting on the device. Sometimes it is clear on the box and sometimes you just do not know!
Theoretically, USB 2.0 HIGH-SPEED devices can reach 480 Mbps (or 60 MB/s) but RARELY does. It often only reaches 1/10 of that speed. It is all marketing crap.
see Wikipedia on USB where it says:
"Typical hi-speed USB devices operate at lower speeds, often about 3 MB/s overall, sometimes up to 10-20 MB/s"
Firewall is MUCH better. In real world situations, it transfers data at a much higher speed. I will take a Firewire drive over a USB 2.0 drive anytime.
If you want a REALLY fast data transfer, get a drive with Firewire 800 (but not all Macs have a Firewire 800 port).
Galley said 6:04PM on 5-21-2008
Mmm... FireWire...
Reply
mstngo said 6:06PM on 5-21-2008
i bought a couple of the 160B at target a month ago for 30.00 dollars each on clearance New in the box.
Reply
jbrown510 said 6:28PM on 5-21-2008
Where is the 500GB version? Hitatchi and Samsung both announed 500GB 2.5" drives a few months ago (not that they've actually made it to retail yet), but where is WD iwith 500GB 2.5" drives.
I've had WD, Seagate and Hitatchi drives all fail on me at one time or another... you're a fool to think the BRAND has as much to do with quality as the LINE. If you need server grade storage don't buy the cheapest drive you can find... there is a reason some drives cost more.
Reply
Steven Sande said 6:52PM on 5-21-2008
Maxim - You CAN boot off of a Leopard DVD, then point it to the Time Machine backup.
TUAWSteve
Reply
Christopher said 6:58PM on 5-21-2008
WD, or maybe an external harddrive, is a risk.
I was at a friends house.
Dropped it on the wood floor.
One of the internal disks broke.
LAME!!
lost everything.
Reply
ultrasur1 said 7:27PM on 5-21-2008
this is like dishwashing detergent that continues to be "new & improved"
snake oil.
Reply